Kung Fu Humans Chapter Thirteen
KUNG FU HUMANS CHAPTER THIRTEEN We woke up in Po's room, lying on our mats. I awoke dazed and confused, and not to mention very light headed. Had everything that happened today been a dream? It couldn't have. I remembered experiencing it like it was reality. All of a sudden, Shifu and Po rushed up to us. "Girls!" Po exclaimed. "Are you okay? What happened? Did you see her?" I nodded slowly, feeling a little dizzy. "We met her," I said. "She told us how we could achieve inner peace, and-" I pulled my hand up to me forehead and leaned back. "Ow," I muttered. "It… hurts." "Ditto," I heard Trinity mumble. She was sitting up, rubbing her forehead. "Ugh. I doubt we'll be able to train under this." We turned to Nicole. "Nyagh," she groaned. She didn't even have the strength to get up. Had seeing Ai drained power from us? "Did she say anything else?" Po asked. I tried to respond, but couldn't find the strength to say anything. I lay back down on my bed and groaned. "Ugh," I muttered. "Let them rest, panda," Shifu ordered Po. The red panda turned to us. "You will tell us tomorrow," he said. "Today you are to rest and build up strength. A warrior must never fight when they are feeling sick." We nodded. I wasn't feeling sick, though. Just dizziness and a bad headache. But I felt too tired to respond. The girls and I lay back down onto our mattresses and closed our eyes. We heard soft footsteps, which I recognized as, well, not Po's heavy ones. It was Shifu, exiting the room. Po stayed. I don't know why. He should have left and left us to rest. But he didn't. I felt Po's furry index finger brush a few strands of hair out of my eyes. I said nothing, pretending to be asleep, wondering if he would leave or not. He then grabbed my necklace and examined it. I felt him pull it up, which caused the string to jab into the back of my neck. I didn't blame him- the necklace was a thing of beauty. It looked like the empress would wear it. Or the queen. Bottom line: anyone would give to wear this thing around my neck. I started wondering if it had magical properties. The Chinese words changed to English if I pressed the jewel next to a scroll. And that afternoon at the Noodle Shop… I concluded that it really did. After all, it was hand crafted by the Japanese goddess of love, Ai. Why wouldn't a necklace made by a goddess have magical abilities? ---- I don't know how long it was before I had actually fallen asleep. I slept quite soundly, and I didn't have any dreams (not that I can recall, anyway). But I awoke to the warmth of what felt like someone's finger. I felt around it. The thumb was tucked between the pinky finger and ring finger. I was confused. Then I realized it. American Sign Language! I opened my eyes. It was nighttime. Po was sound asleep in his bed, snoring like mad. Trinity and Nicole were awake, and Nicole was signing 'm' into my hand. She was taking sign language this quarter of the school year, and she knew the most sign language. Trinity had selected Spanish as her language, and I had selected Italian. (You may be confused, but let me explain. In our school, there are four languages- Spanish, ASL, Italian, and French. In sixth grade, you take a language each quarter so that you have a little taste of everything, and at the end of the year, you choose a language to continue on until graduating from high school). It had been almost two years since I took ASL, but I still remembered the alphabet. I looked at Nicole and smiled at her, a sign that I knew what letter she was signing. Then she signed another letter into my hand- 'e'. Then another 'e'. Finally, she had formed a sentence. M-E-E-T-U-S-A-T-T-H-E-P-E-A-C-H-T-R-E-E. I nodded to her and they silently hurried out of the room. I followed them quickly. We quickly and quietly scurried down the halls, careful not to awake any masters, and out the door to the pool next to the cliff, overlooking the valley. Trinity motioned for us to follow her. We ran across the side of the palace, and to where the Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom was. I flung myself down on the smooth, ticklish grass and sighed. My head was much better since I had gotten some rest. Obviously, so were Nicole and Trinity's heads. "Okay, I want to know two things," I said to them as my friends sat down on either side of me, their legs dangling off the edge of the cliff. "What are they?" Trinity asked. "One: Nicole, how do you sign so fast? And two, why am I here?" I asked. "I last took an ASL class yesterday in the human world's time, besides you, who took it a year and three quarters ago," Nicole explained. "And we wanted to talk to you," Trinity said. "About Chauntella Mirar." I looked at them and nodded. "Tell me." This was serious. "Shifu thought that we were strong enough to receive the goddess scroll," Nicole said. "So that must mean he thinks that we're strong enough to fight our first bad guy." "And if we're losing, Ai will surely give us some of her power," Trinity said. "The thing that happened to you with the rhinos may happen again." I looked at my two best friends and realized that they were right. We had to do this. We were the Dragon Sisters. It was up to us to defeat Chauntella. I sighed. "You're right," I said. "We'll go as soon as the sun appears over that horizon line." I pointed to the horizon line over the cliff. The lower half of the sky was turning a bit pink, but the sun had not appeared yet. "Then we'd better start packing," Nicole said. "Shifu is always up super early." We nodded and went back into the palace. We grabbed bags that Mr. Ping had given us to keep our clothes in. First we headed to the kitchen and packed snacks and drinks. Then we headed into the training hall to steal (yes, steal. We were, in fact, stealing from them) some weapons- and by weapons, I meant about a dozen shurukens- and then we went into the room to get changed, trying not to wake Po up. Not to our surprise, he stayed fast asleep. The girls and I all wore the shoes and shirt that we had worn when battling the rhinos, hoping that they were good luck, and that they would help us to win this battle. We wore matching light blue jean shorts, and put our hair in ponytails to keep it out of our faces. I looked in a nearby mirror and admired myself. I looked just like a real live warrior. No. I was a warrior. This was my destiny. This was what I was born to do. To be a Kung Fu master. I looked out of the window and saw the sun poking over the horizon line. Nicole touched my arm and I looked at her to see her signing away again- W-E-H-A-V-E-T-O-G-O-N-O-W. I was amazed at how fast her fingers flew. This girl could really sign. I nodded and followed the girls out of the room, down the hall, and into the sacred hall of warriors where we would depart from. I turned around and the first thing that my eyes turned to was the Sword of Heroes. My sword. I stopped the girls and ran up to it, taking it from its place on the pedestal. "Really?" Trinity whispered. I had told the girls what happened with the sword and I one night at dinner, and they knew all about it now. I nodded in response. "This may help us win the battle," I whispered to her. "Let's keep moving." We fled down the thousand steps. At the bottom step was Zeng, sitting down, admiring the sky. We usually found him here ever since his cousin was accused. I put a hand on his shoulder, making our presence known. He jumped and turned around; realizing it was only we. "Zeng," I said. "We need a ride to the palace. Now." He nodded, not bothering to question our orders, and pulled a cart out of nowhere. We sat in it, Trinity up front, me in the back. Zeng started up the thing and we rode away. As we started to get out of the valley, I looked behind me. The Jade Palace was disappearing over the horizon. I looked at it one last time, with tears in my eyes. If we failed to defeat Chauntella and she held us captive, like the people and animals in her secret base, then we would never see the Jade Palace ever again. Which meant that I would never see Po again. Po. Oh, there are so many things I want to say to him before I die. "Po, I think I'm in love with you." That's one of the things I need to say to him. I also want to thank him. Thank him for training me. Thank him for making me into what I am today. I sighed, feeling a damp tear roll down my right cheek as the palace faded out of sight behind me. "Goodbye then, Jade Palace. For now, or… or forever."… ---- It had to be mid-day when we reached the grand palace. As soon as we got off the cart, I flung open the door, and gasped. We were shocked at what we saw. The place was a mess. All of the artifacts and things had fallen to the ground and split into tiny bits and pieces. A dark red substance stained the floor. I leaned down and touched it with my finger. Then I smelt it. It was against the laws of criminal investigation to touch or smell a substance before defining what it was, but I did it anyway. This was a serious crisis. I turned to face my friends' horrified faces. "Blood," I said. "Fresh blood." We looked at each other. "Chauntella!" we all exclaimed in unison, and we ran into the palace, up the staircase leading to Chauntella's room. Halfway up, we noticed a familiar person lying on the stairs. Or should I say, a familiar lemur. "Chuan!" I yelled, leaning down to help our friend. I turned her over, since she was laying face down. Her clothes were ripped up, she had some red stuff (blood, probably) around her face, and she had bruises everywhere. "Chuan, it's us, Trinity, Nicole and Kelsi," Trinity said. "Are you okay?" Chuan then half opened her eyes and shook her head 'no'. "Ch… Ch… Chauntella Mirar… attacked us…" "Where is she?" Nicole asked, desperate to teach Chauntella a lesson. Chuan pointed up the stairs. "That way." We left her there (I felt a little guilty, but we had to get to Chauntella before she did any more damage) and ran up the stairs, down the hall, and pushed against the door. I jiggled the handle. Locked. "Dang it!" I screamed in a voice that could probably be heard all the way across China. "CHAUNTELLA! OPEN UP! NOW!" "Let me try," Trinity said. She pushed me out of the way. My friend pulled something out of her hair. A bobby pin. She shoved it into the keyhole and turned the knob with all her might. It opened, not to mention almost fell off the door. We darted into the room and got into Kung Fu poses, trying to intimidate Chauntella. "I'm back, Chauntella, and I'm ready to take you down!" I yelled. Chauntella was standing in front of the window, her back to us. She was gazing out at the grounds. "If you know that you're going to fail, and if you try anyway, you have just thrown your life away," she said, in her deep and mysterious voice. "What the heck?" Nicole asked. "That's a famous quote from Chi, brother of Ai, who is also my friend," Chauntella said, not turning around. "It states that if you try something and fail, your life has been wasted. I have been watching you girls for a few weeks. You are ready to battle me. I'm going to say this one time." She spun around, looking at me with her icy eyes. It made me shiver. "You are not," she finished. "You have no clue what we're capable of," I said. I then glanced to my friends. They looked petrified, and frozen, like I did when I first saw Chauntella's face. "I do, young warrior, I do," Chauntella disagreed. "I also know what you're not capable of. So much, so much." "Just fight us," was all Nicole could say through her frozen teeth. "Not here, we'd destroy the beautiful room," Chauntella said, her face still emotionless. "We must do it in my… secret base, as you like to call it." She snapped her fingers and our surroundings faded. They were replaced with an area that looked like Chauntella's base. I recognized the rhinos and the captured people and animals. "Let this battle begin," Chauntella said, smiling. And then I knew it. We shouldn't have come here. We weren't ready for a battle. We would lose for sure.